HACKSAW RIDGE 153
77th Infantry Division and deployed to the Pacific theater. During the Battle of Oki-
nawa, the 77th is ordered to relieve the 96th Infantry Division, whose mission is
to scale and secure the Maeda Escarpment (“Hacksaw Ridge”). Although many sol-
diers are killed during the battle, Doss is able to save some members of his unit.
After a night spent in a foxhole with a fellow soldier, Smitty (Luke Bracey), Doss
and his unit face a Japanese counterattack. Smitty dies in the attack, and a number
of Doss’s fellow soldiers are left injured on the field. Doss comes up with a creative
solution for rescuing his injured squad mates: he carries them to the edge of a cliff
and lowers them to safety using a rope sling. Doss successfully saves dozens of
wounded soldiers. At dawn, Doss saves Howell, and the two somehow escape from
Hacksaw Ridge despite enemy fire. Capt. Glover lauds Doss for his brave efforts and
confirms that the men will not move forward to their next mission without him.
Doss sustains injuries from a grenade, but his unit wins their battle, and Doss makes
it down the cliff with his Bible in hand. Archival footage confirms that Doss saved
75 soldiers at Hacksaw Ridge and was subsequently awarded the Medal of Honor
by Pres. Harry S. Truman (12 October 1945).
Reception
Hacksaw Ridge opened on 4 November 2016 and ran until 9 March 2017 (widest
release: 2,971 theaters). In those 18 weeks the movie grossed $67.2 million in North
Amer i ca and another $108.2 million in foreign markets, for a worldwide total of
$175.3 million against a production bud get of $40 million. Reviews of Hacksaw
Ridge were overwhelmingly positive, though not without misgivings. Film critic
Richard Brody found its moral sobriety superior to the patriotic naiveté of Saving
Private Ryan but also detected troubling contradictions at its core: “When Steven
Spielberg depicted the gory horrors of war in Saving Private Ryan, its effect was to
assert that, in effect, we— their descendants— were the children of demigods, of
virtual superheroes who had been through Hell on Earth to keep us safe; the idea
meshes with his career- long cinematic theme and tone of filial piety. Gibson shows
the same horrors with an irrepressible sense of excitement; with the best of inten-
tions, an overt revulsion at war, and the honoring of Doss’s actions, Gibson has
made a movie that’s nearly pathological in its love of vio lence— but he nonetheless
counterbalances its amoral pleasures with an understanding of the psychological
devastation that war wreaks” (Brody, 2016).
Reel History Versus Real History
Though Doss was nine years dead when Hacksaw Ridge was made, the filmmakers
respected his wishes regarding authenticity and made a movie that is mostly accu-
rate historically. With regard to Doss’s motivation to eschew vio lence, screenwrit-
ers Robert Schenkkan, Randall Wallace (uncredited), and Andrew Knight made it
more personal than religious for wider audience appeal. Schenkkan and Knight
also took some liberties with the story of Doss’s courtship of Dorothy Schutte and,
for streamlining purposes, they omitted Doss’s prior combat ser vice in the Battle
of Guam (21 July–10 August 1944) and the Battle of Leyte Gulf (17 October–26
December 1944). The movie also gives the impression that Doss’s actions on